SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM
Socialism is, on the whole, hostile to the State. All Socialists hate
the State as at present constituted, because it protects the property
which they wish to seize. However, many Socialists hate not only the
State in its present form. They have become doubtful whether private
capital or the State is the greater evil. They long for liberty, and
would not welcome the restraint of any State, and least of all that of
the absolute, all-regulating, and constantly interfering Socialistic
State. Hence many Socialists have become Anarchists. Socialists may be
divided into two classes--Communists and Anarchists--and Prince
Kropotkin, the foremost Anarchist leader living, described the two
Socialistic sections as follows: "A section of Socialists believes
that it is impossible to attain Socialism without sacrificing personal
liberty on the altar of the State. Another section, to which we
belong, believes, on the contrary, that it is only by the abolition of
the State, by the conquest of perfect liberty by the individual, by
free agreement, association, and absolute free federation, that we can
reach Communism."[1073] Many Socialists, seeing the enemy rather in
the State than in private capital, express their passionate hatred of
the State: "The State at present is simply a huge machine for robbing
and slave-driving the poor by brute force."[1074] "The Parliament ever
cries for more money, more money for the service of the State. Just
heavens! Of what service is the State? Of very little service to
honest, industrious men,"[1075] The philosopher of British Socialism
frankly confesses himself a revolutionary Anarchist: "As an
international revolutionist I have always been strongly sympathetic
with all movements for local autonomy as most directly tending to
destroy the modern 'nation' or centralised bureaucratic State."[1076]
"It is quite true that Socialism will have to take over the accursed
legacy of existing national frontiers from the bourgeois world-order;
but Socialism will take it over merely with the view of killing it off
and burying it at the earliest possible moment. The modern nation or
centralised State is a hideous monstrosity, the offspring of
capitalism in its various phases; in its present shape the outcome of
the developed capitalism of the great industry. We quite admit that in
form it may, and probably will, survive the earlier stage of
Socialism, but its ultimate disappearance is none the less certain.
The sentiment of the national patriotism will then, let us hope, be
reduced to its last expression--the holding of annual dinners, or some
harmless festivity of this sort, such as is affected by the natives of
certain English counties resident in the metropolis. The Nationalist
movement, therefore, is an old Radical 'plank' which clearly no longer
belongs to us as Socialists."[1077]
The Socialist-Anarchist hates State government in every form. To him a
Social-Democratic State is quite as hateful as any other form of
government: "The State is the evil, the inveterate foe of labour--be
the Government Autocratic, Bureaucratic, or Social-Democratic. For
what, after all, is our vaunted nose-counting, majority-ridden
Democracy but an expansion of the old-time tyranny of monarch and
oligarch, inasmuch as the Governmentalist, whatever his stripe, is
doomed to act on the two root principles of statecraft--force and
fraud? And, obviously, so long as that is so, his particular profession
of political faith is almost a matter of indifference."[1078] "What
was, what is the State, wherever it exists, but a community of human
beings barbarically held together by a well-drilled gang of
magistrates, soldiers, policemen, gaolers, and hangmen?"[1079] Mr.
Blatchford, who is apparently never quite sure in his mind whether he
is a Socialist, a Communist, or an Anarchist, gives voice to his
Anarchist sentiments in the words: "Rightly or wrongly, I am opposed to
godship, kingship, lordship, priestship. Rightly or wrongly, I am
opposed to imperialism, militarism, and conquest. Rightly or wrongly, I
am for universal brotherhood and universal freedom."[1080]
Another influential Socialist writer exclaims: "What is freedom but
the unfettered use of all the powers which God for use has
given?"[1081]--a sentiment which is heartily endorsed by all
Anarchists. However, the unfettered use of all powers means that the
will of the individual, not the will of society, is the supreme law.
It means the denial of the supremacy of society, the State,
government. Similar sentiments are expressed with greater energy and
greater fulness by many Socialist writers. Mr. Davidson, for instance,
says: "In the new order every man (woman, of course, included) will be
his own legislator. In the state of ultimate and universal freedom to
which we aspire, when the greatest of all tyrants, poverty, is slain
and plenty sits on the throne which the lean monster has so long
usurped--it may well be that there shall be no necessity for any law
except that which the purified conscience of every individual man and
woman will readily supply. Then will have come the true Golden Age,
the millennium of Christian Anarchism."[1082]
The claims, programme, and aims of Socialism and Anarchism are
curiously alike. Prince Kropotkin, the leading exponent of Anarchism,
writes: "Anarchy appears as a constituent part of the new philosophy,
and that is why Anarchists come in contact on so many points with the
greatest thinkers and poets of the present day. In fact, it is certain
that in proportion as the human mind frees itself from ideas
inculcated by minorities of priests, military chiefs, and judges, all
striving to establish their domination, and of scientists paid to
perpetuate it, a conception of society arises, in Which conception
there is no longer room for those dominating minorities. A society
entering into possession of the social capital accumulated by the
labour of preceding generations, organises itself so as to make use of
this capital in the interests of all, and constitutes itself without
reconstituting the power of the ruling minorities. Acknowledging as a
fact the equal rights of all its members to the treasures accumulated
in the past, it no longer recognises a division between exploited and
exploiters, governed and governors, dominated and dominators, and it
seeks to establish a certain harmonious compatibility in its midst not
by subjecting all its members to an authority that is fictitiously
supposed to represent society, not by trying to establish uniformity,
but by urging all men to develop free initiative, free action, free
association."[1083]
There is little difference between the Anarchism of Proudhon,
Bakounin, and Kropotkin, and the Socialism of many British Socialists.
The economic doctrines of Socialism and Anarchism are practically
identical. Socialism has taken the most important doctrines from
Proudhon,[1084] and, owing to the similarity of their views and aims,
Socialists and Anarchists are commingling and fraternising. Anarchists
see in Socialists a wing of the great Anarchist army of destruction,
and Socialists see in Anarchists associates and friends and partners
in the revolution and general pillage which both movements equally
strongly desire to bring about. Therefore a leading Fabian Socialist
tells us: "Kropotkin is really an advocate of free Democracy, and I
venture to suggest that he describes himself as an Anarchist rather
from the point of view of the Russian recoiling from a despotism
compared to which Democracy seems to be no government at all, than
from the point of view of the American or Englishman who is free
enough already to begin grumbling over Democracy as 'the tyranny of
the majority' and 'the coming slavery.'"[1085] If Kropotkin is a
"Democrat," then Ravachol, Vaillant, Henry, Pallas, and Bresci were
also merely Democrats.
British Anarchists are closely watching the British Socialist Labour
movement, which they wish to lead into Anarchist channels. Thus we
learn from an Anarchist monthly: "The question of the position to be
taken in relation to the labour movement is certainly one of the
greatest importance to Anarchists. It does not suffice for us to form
groups for propaganda and for revolutionary action. We must convert as
far as possible the mass of the workers, because without them we can
neither overthrow the existing society nor reconstitute a new one. And
since to rise from the submissive state in which the great majority of
the proletarians now vegetate to a conception of Anarchism and a desire
for its realisation, is required an evolution which generally is not
passed through under the sole influence of the propaganda; since the
lessons derived from the facts of daily life are more efficacious than
all doctrinaire preaching, it is for us to take an active part in the
life of the masses and to use all the means which circumstances permit
to gradually awaken the spirit of revolt, and to show by these facts
the path which leads to emancipation. Amongst these means the Labour
movement stands first, and we should be wrong to neglect it. In this
movement we find numbers of workers who struggle for the amelioration
of their conditions. They may be mistaken as to the aim they have in
view and as to the means of attaining it, and in our view they
generally are. But at least they no longer resign themselves to
oppression nor regard it as just--they hope and they struggle. We can
more easily arouse in them that feeling of solidarity towards their
exploited fellow-workers and of hatred against exploitation, which must
lead to a definitive struggle for the abolition of all domination of
man over man."[1086] Anarchists therefore constantly try to influence
the British Socialist Labour movement. When, for instance, in the
autumn of 1907 the possibility of a railway strike was being discussed,
Anarchists did their best to bring about a revolutionary struggle: "The
railway crisis must have shown very clearly that if the men had but the
will, they have the power to bring about at any time a revolutionary
situation in the struggle of labour against capital. Some day they will
have to do this, for the conditions of the conflict will leave them no
choice. They will perhaps learn also that the glorification of a man
like Bell--whose fooling of their cause is his method of
advertisement--means putting powers into one man's hands that no man
ought to possess. Nothing could be more absurd than the prolongation of
this 'crisis' which has been done so that one man might have the centre
of the stage, while hundreds of thousands of men toil on in suspense.
Bell is everything: the workers are mere cyphers. Yet this man is
mistrusted by many; and everyone knows how on occasion he can join the
feast of the directors and be one of them. And if generalship were
needed, what an ass this would be to attempt to lead the men to
victory! Successful strikes are never made by the farcical tactics of a
Bell. Recognition, forsooth! They'll recognise you when you strike.
Workers, watch your leaders!"[1087]
In view of the connection existing between British Socialism and
Anarchism, it is but natural that Socialists have become the
apologists of Anarchism. "The vulgar notion that Anarchism is a
synonym for disorder is as nearly as possible the reverse of the
truth. It is Governments and Laws that do all the mischief. They
produce the very evils they pretend to remedy."[1088] "Verily the
State is the evil. Back to the land. Back to the simple life. Away
with Governments, palavers, Dumas, and Courts of Law. Long live the
Commune."[1089]
Anarchists contend that the "Social Revolution" for which most
Socialists strive will become an Anarchist revolution: "If the workers
succeed by revolt in destroying the mutual insurance society of
landlords, bankers, priests, judges, and soldiers; if the people
become masters of their destiny for a few months, and lay hands on the
riches they have created and which belong to them by right--will they
really begin to reconstitute that blood-sucker, the State[1090]?" "On
the day when ancient institutions splinter into fragments before the
axe of the proletariat, voices will be heard shouting: Bread for all!
Lodging for all! Right for all to the comforts of life! And these
voices will be heeded. The people will say to themselves: Let us
begin by satisfying our thirst for the life, the joy, the liberty we
have never known. And when all have tasted happiness we will set to
work; the work of demolishing the last vestiges of middle-class rule,
with its account-book morality, its philosophy of debit and credit,
its institutions of mine and thine. 'While we throw down we shall be
building' as Proudhon said, 'we shall build in the name of Communism
and of Anarchy."[1091] Anarchists are authorities on revolutions. Very
likely Prince Kropotkin's view is right.
There are two kinds of Anarchists: Philosophic Anarchists who
propagate their views by speech and pen, and Anarchists of action who
propagate their views by dynamite and dagger, and the former are
responsible for the crimes of the latter. Many British Socialists
defend not only philosophic Anarchism, but also that form of Anarchism
which finds its expression in murder.
Leading British Socialists refer, for instance, to the four
Anarchists, Spies, Fischer, Engel, and Parsons, the heroes of the
Chicago bomb outrage, who were responsible for the death of six
policemen and for the wounding of about sixty, and who were hanged in
November 1886 in Chicago, as "martyrs,"[1092] and British Socialists
are urged to follow the glorious footsteps of the Chicago Anarchists:
Then on to revolution, boys! Keep Freedom's highway broad.
The path where Spies and Parsons fell--as fearlessly they trod;
And though we fall as they fell--millions follow on the road,
To carry the Red Flag to victory.[1093]
The sympathy which British Socialists feel for the Chicago Anarchists
arises from the similarity of their aims. The programme of the
American Anarchists was, according to the Pittsburg proclamation, as
follows:
(1) Destruction of the existing class rule, by all means, _i.e._ by
energetic, relentless, revolutionary, and international action. (2)
Establishment of a free Society based upon co-operative organisation
of production. (3) Free exchange of equivalent products by and between
the productive organisations without commerce and profit-mongery. (4)
Organisation of education on a secular, scientific, and equal basis
for both sexes. (5) Equal rights for all without distinction of sex or
race. (6) Regulation of all public affairs by free contracts between
the autonomous (independent) communes and associations resting on a
federalists basis.[1094]
The attitude of many leading British Socialists towards the murdering
of monarchs and statesmen may be gauged from the following extracts:
"On the occasion of the assassination of any potentate or statesman,
the public opinion of the possessing class and its organs is lashed up
to a white heat of artificial fury and indignation against the
perpetrator, while they have nothing but approbation for the
functionary--military or civil--who puts to death a fellow-creature in
the course of what they are pleased to call his duty. Evidently force
and bloodshed, when contrary to the interests of the possessing class,
is a monstrous crime, but when it is in their favour it becomes a duty
and a necessity."[1095] "We believe the 'potting' of the 'heads' of
States to be a foolish and reprehensible policy, but the matter does
not concern us as Socialists. We have our own quarrel with the
Anarchists, both as to principles and tactics, but that is no reason
why, as certain persons seem to think, we should put on sackcloth and
ashes, and dissolve ourselves in tears because, say, M. Carnot or the
head of any other State has been assassinated by Anarchists. What is
Carnot to us or we to Carnot, that we should weep for him? We do not
specially desire the death of political personages, while we often
regret their slaying on grounds of expediency, if on no others. But at
the same time Socialists have no sentimental tears to waste over the
heads of States and their misfortunes. To the Socialist the head of a
State, as such, is simply a figure-head to whose fate he is
indifferent--a ninepin representing the current political and social
order."[1096]
We're low, we're low, we're very very low.
And yet when the trumpets ring.
The thrust of a poor man's arm will go
Through the heart of the proudest king.[1097]
The "Socialist Annual" contains in its calendar pages numerous items
under the heading "For the Working Class to Remember," which is
filled with Socialist dates such as "birth of Mr. Blatchford," and
with the records of the most conspicuous Anarchist, Nihilist, and
Revolutionary crimes. Details regarding the deeds of Orsini and
Louise Michel, Jack Cade and Wat Tyler, the execution of Louis XVI.
and Marie Antoinette, the assassination of Presidents Lincoln,
McKinley, and Carnot, the attempt on King Alfonso, and other facts
are there recorded--"for the working class to remember." Earlier or
later the Socialist-Communist-Anarchist agitation in Great Britain
may, and very likely will, lead to Anarchist outrages.
FOOTNOTES:
[1073] Prince Kropotkin, _Anarchism_, p. 16.
[1074] B. Shaw, _The Impossibilities of Anarchism_, p. 24.
[1075] Davidson, _The Democrat's Address_, p. 15.
[1076] Bax, _Paris Commune_, p. 35.
[1077] Bax, _Essays in Socialism_, pp. 98, 99.
[1078] Davidson, _Christ, State, and Commune_, pp. 16, 17.
[1079] _Ibid._ p. 6.
[1080] Blatchford, _God and My Neighbour_, p. 195.
[1081] Thompson, _That Blessed Word Liberty_, p. 13.
[1082] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 172.
[1083] Kropotkin, _Anarchism_, p. 8.
[1084] Brockhaus, _Konversations Lexikon_, vol. i. p. 578.
[1085] Shaw, _The Impossibilities of Anarchism_, p. 26.
[1086] _Freedom_, November 1907.
[1087] _Freedom_, November 1907.
[1088] Davidson, _Christ, State, and Commune_, p. 22.
[1089] _Ibid._ p. 31.
[1090] Kropotkin, _Anarchism_, p. 19.
[1091] Kropotkin, _The Wage System_, p. 15.
[1092] See Leatham, _Lives of the Chicago Martyrs_.
[1093] _Social-Democratic Federation Song Book_, p. 35.
[1094] Bliss, _Encyclopedia of Social Reform_, p. 63.
[1095] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism of Socialism_, p. 31.
[1096] Bax, _A Short History of the Paris Commune_, p. 78.
[1097] _Independent Labour Party Song Book_, p. 33.